Firefox Environmental Sustainability Toolkit

1. Firefox Environmental Sustainability Toolkit SURF-IT 2008 Final Presentation Andrew Zaldivar Mentor: Professor Bill Tomlinson

2. Energy Consumption • 2007 Annual Energy Review • 102 Quadrillion Btu of energy consumed • Outpacing domestic production • 29% of consumption came from energy consumed

3. Energy Consumption by Sectors • 40% consumed by industry and transportation • 30% consumed by homes and businesses each

4. Carbon Emissions • Roughly 40% of carbon emissions come from residential and commercial sectors (not including portions of transportation sectors used by residential sectors) • 2.2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) created due to consumption of energy from residential and commercial sectors • CO2: greenhouse gas responsible for climate change

5. Problem Domain • 71% of adults in the US said that they are “doing anything to reduce [their] carbon footprint” (N=1000) • Energy consumption continues to grow • Must reduce greenhouse gas production • Avert impact of global change • How do we approach this problem?

6. Energy Conservation • “What we need are options to achieve that growth while, at the same time lessening, our dependence on fossil fuels and increasing our use of cleaner, more secure sources of energy.” – Department of Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, speech at Harvard Business School Global Leadership Forum (06/22/2006) • Energy can be conserved at the individual level

7. Individual Level • In terms of computing • “…making abstract environmental data concrete for everyday life.” • Explored usage of social networking websites (e.g., MySpace, Friendster, Yahoo 360!) • Integrated ecological footprint data into popular social networking sites • Allowed users to compare their footprint amongst their social network J.C. Mankoff et al., Environmental sustainability and interaction, Ext. Abstract CHI 2007 ACM, 2007, pp. 2121-2124. J.C. Mankoff et al., “Leveraging Social Networks To Motivate Individuals to Reduce their Ecological Footprints,” Proceedings of the 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, IEEE Computer Society, 2007.

8. The Internet • Design of technology affects lifestyles and decisions in people • The Internet: numerous interactions that may have huge influence in people • Many developers/enthusiast created projects and built systems and databases on the Internet to address environmental issues

9. Related Work • Knowmore.org • Alerts users of the social and environmental impact of companies via alert messages and icons • Politically-socially intrigue

10. Related Work (cont.) • BadBuster • Generates an environmental score to products and companies based on public information • Measures environmental friendliness

11. Firefox Environmental Sustainability Toolkit • FEST • Connects online services (Amazon.com, Google Maps, Albertsons, Cars.com) to environmental databases (TravelMatters.org, EPEAT.net) • Pornpat Nikamanon & Matt Meng-Pin Yang • Works in Firefox web browser • Implemented in Greasemonkey • First time anyone assembled many different environmental data mash-ups

12. Implementation & Framework

13. Online Services with FEST

14. Limitations • Platform • Greasemonkey only modifies HTML-pages and Firefox-only • Online service shifting to Java, Silverlight, Flash, and Flex • Solution: Investigate other platform that allow client side modification for other frameworks • Ethics • Site owners may not appreciate their web page being modified • Solution: contact web service • Technical • No official way of updating all its users of any new versions • Solution: develop at the extension level

15. Future Work • Evaluation • System & Interface • Comprehensiveness • Usefulness • Impact • Web presence • A site describing the project, where to download necessary files, and a list of ideas for other online services.

16. Conclusion • Problem: energy consumption increasing; global climate change as result • Solution: reduce energy consumption -> reduce greenhouse gas -> ward off climate change -> sustainability • How: individual level via the Internet as the medium • FEST: system and framework that integrates environmental information from databases onto online services • Goal: suspect that FEST can effectively play huge role in addressing environmental issues.

17. Acknowledgments • I would like to thank: • UCI Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship in Information Technology (SURF-IT) 2008 • California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) • Members of the Social Code Group • Pornpat Nikamanon & Matt Meng-Pin Yang • Mentor: Professor Bill Tomlinson

18. References • Energy Information Administration (EIA) - Annual Energy Review. http://www.eia.doe.gov/aer/. • Polling Report. (2008). Environment. Retrieved August 22, 2008, from http://www.pollingreport.com/enviro.htm. • Department of Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, speech at Harvard Business School Global Leadership Forum (June 22, 2009). http://www.energy.gov/news/3771.htm. • J.C. Mankoff et al., Environmental sustainability and interaction, Ext. Abstract CHI 2007 ACM, 2007, pp. 2121-2124. • J.C. Mankoff et al., “Leveraging Social Networks To Motivate Individuals to Reduce their Ecological Footprints,” Proceedings of the 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, IEEE Computer Society, 2007. • Greasemonkey. http://www.greasespot.net/. • Knowmore.org. http://www.knowmore.org/. • BadBuster. http://badbuster.com/. • Amazon.com. http://www.amazon.com/. • Google Maps. http://maps.google.com/.

19. Questions? SURF-IT 2008 Final Presentation Andrew Zaldivar Mentor: Professor Bill Tomlinson